Piracy in the Baltic and North Seas

[Bräckvattenspirat]

I've been looking into piracy through the ages here in Scandinavia for a while, and thought I would share a bit of what I find while doing so.

One of the things I've been up to in the last six months is trying to figure out heads or tails of the archive of privateering in the Swedish National Archives. There are actually several of those, but there is one main archive, but it is not in a very good order. It is mainly sectioned up in years between somewhere around 1600 up until 1825. It takes up 2,5 meters of shelf space and consists of 27 volumes. Only parts of it have archive lists that cover it. To make things worse. Much of the early stuff is in several different languages such as German, Dutch, Latin or Polish since much of it is complains about wrongfully, according to those complaining, taken prizes.

But I did find a real gem in one of the earliest volumes. What could be called the master copy of the Swedish Letter of Marques from July 1657. One month earlier, June 1 1657, Denmark declared war on Sweden and Sweden were already at war with Russia and Poland. So this Letter of Marque would be signed by King Karl X Gustaf in the wars against Russia, Poland and Denmark.

The thing is that there are extremely few Swedish Letters of Marque that have survived to this day. This one is the first that I have ever seen.

[Stynky Tudor]

20 hours ago, Bräckvattenspirat said:

The thing is that there are extremely few Swedish Letters of Marque that have survived to this day. This one is the first that I have ever seen.

Again Wow! What a wonderful find and the condition is awesome - very cool.

[Bräckvattenspirat]

I think I will continue with just posting photos from my photo album and explain what we see. I'll start with the stuff that have shorter stories, so I don't have to write entire essays. 

A few weeks ago we went to the Historic Museum here in Stockholm with the family. The Historic Museum covers Swedens history up until about 1523. The rather odd date is because the de facto break with the so called Kalmar Union took place in that year. Anyhow, I thought I would share two photos from that Museum.

The first is what is probably one of the oldest cannons/guns in existence. It is called the Loshult gun/cannon. It is believed to be as old as the first half of the 14th century. But since it was found without other archaeological context around it, and since there is no organic matter to do c14 dating, it is dated by comparing it with the Milemete document from 1326. The only gun from that era that have been possible to date properly, that I know of, is also located here in Sweden, and it is the Marstrand gun. that one I have not seen yet, but I plan to remedy that next time I'm going to the west coast. For more info on the Marstrand gun, see here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00253359.2023.2225311

 

The other picture is a hunting horn, made out of a walrus tusk. It was owned by the Swedish, Danish and Norwegian king Erik of Pomerania. In 1396 he was elected King in Sweden, after he had been King in both Denmark and Norway for a few years. Thus he was the first king in what became known as the Kalmar Union, where all three kingdoms were united under one king. It was not a peaceful reign of Erik and in 1439 he was deposed for the third and last time as king. He then fled to the island of Gotland and the castle of Visborg, located in the city of Visby, where he turned to piracy with the remains of his fleet. He had a successful career as a pirate/ship owner until 1449 when the pressure became to high and he fled to Pomerania.

[Mary Diamond]

Oh, my, what gorgeous work! Thank you for sharing the history and the photos.